1. Field
The present application generally relates to the operation of communication systems, and more particularly, to methods and apparatus for transmitting identification information concerning a transmitter in a communication system.
2. Background
In presently known communication systems, such as content delivery/media distribution systems (e.g., Forward Link Only (FLO) or digital video broadcast (DVB-T/H) systems), real time and non real time services are typically packed into transmission frames (e.g., a FLO superframe) and delivered to devices on a network. Additionally, such communication systems may utilize Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) to provide communications between a network server and one or more mobile devices. This communication provides a transmission superframe having data slots that are packed with content to be delivered over a distribution network as a transmit waveform.
It is known to effect transmitter identification and position determination of mobile devices in some wireless networks through the use of positioning pilot channels (PPC) in FLO networks. In particular, known transmitter identification involves determining a channel profile from pilot symbols of an active PPC symbol from each individual transmitter to a receiver. Although the transmitter identity may not explicitly be encoded in the PPC symbols, the identities of transmitters in a given region may be determined as long as a schedule of when transmitters transmit active PPC symbols is known, such as sequencing active transmitters in a pseudo time division multiple access (TDMA) fashion (e.g., the transmitters follows a known time sequence of active transmission where only one transmitter at a time will be active in the given region). Accordingly, it is possible to use the location of an active PPC symbol in a superframe to map transmitters to corresponding PPC symbols with additional use of overhead channels (e.g., overhead information symbols (OIS)) in the superframe. Under this scheme, the periodicity (i.e., scheduling) of the network transmitters in terms of the superframe must be also known by the receivers.